Blades
by hawkeyesticks
Summary: Jane's first season in the CWHL would be a dream come true... if not for the team doctor who seems to have it in for her
1. Prologue

Prologue: Welcome to the Preseason

"Back the hell off."

Jane Rizzoli throws herself down on the bench and pushes away the gloved hands reaching for her helmet.

"I'll need to examine you before I'll allow you back into the game."

"Bullshit you will." She tries to push herself further down the bench and away from the young doctor, but her coach puts a hand on her shoulder and gently shoves her back the other way. She turns and pulls a face at him and he shakes his head.

"I don't know what kind of program you're coming from over at the academy, Rizzoli, but with the Blades the medical team's got the last word." Vince Korsak crosses his arms and turns to watch play continue, and Jane sighs heavily, sliding back towards the doctor.

The woman has her cage unsnapped quickly, and a penlight in front of her eyes. "You were unsteady coming back to the bench; have you got any head or neck pain?"

Jane shakes her head hard, which as it turns out is a dumb idea. It freaking hurts. Not that she's going to tell that to a doctor who's got her icetime in her hands. "I just took a stick to the chin; it's happened before, it'll happen again. I'm _fine_."

"Your pupils aren't reacting evenly."

"_Your_ pupils aren't reacting evenly."

"I can assure you that they are. I'm going to take you back to the clinic for further assessment, wait here." She's striding down the bench towards Korsak when Jane's brain tells her she's got heels on, _while she's standing on a hockey bench_, and she frowns. That stick must've hit harder than she'd thought.


	2. Chapter 1

Nights after Saturday afternoon games at the academy usually found Jane sprawled on her couch watching a Bruins game, and the night after her first pro match continues the trend.

Not that she'd gotten more than a period and a half in the game, but that's beside the point.

"Hey Coop, wanna grab me another Gato?" The figure sprawled across the couch beside her had been another mainstay during most of her time at school. Riley had been a year ahead of her in everything, from the academy to the force and even in the draft, having been picked up by the Blades in the third round the previous year. She leans across and taps her empty bottle against Riley's shoulder. "I'm all out."

"Get it yourself, you lazy bum. It's not even a whistle right now."

"I'm injured," she whines, flopping back onto the couch and dramatically flinging her arm across the cushions.

Riley rolls her eyes, but when Rask smothers the puck and the game goes to commercial she caves and heads for the fridge. "Grape?"

"Please." The bottle comes flying toward her head and she barely catches it. "Jeez, are you _trying_ to knock me out?"

"Hmm, I might be." Riley perches on the arm of the couch and takes a swig from her beer. "I really would prefer another left winger to play on my line; you're a bit of a pylon."

Jane tosses a pillow that Riley easily dodges, seeing as it barely comes anywhere close to hitting her. "You take that back!"

"Nah, it's true, Carter skated circles around you today."

"You're bringing that up, _really_? I seem to remember that she only got that break cause you coughed the puck up to her on the halfboards."

"_I_ was only there 'cause you were out of position to begin with."

"Well, _I_ was only out of position because I was-" she puts on a posh accent "- 'suffering from the aftereffects of a concussive blow to the mandible'."

"I see Isles has got to ya."

"Gotten to Coach, too."

Riley nods sympathetically. "Yeah, she comes down pretty hard on head injuries. Last time I got my bell rung she took me out for two weeks."

"It wasn't even that bad. Like, it probably would've been if Carter had meant to go for the highstick, but it only happened 'cause her blade skidded up my stick when we were fighting for possession. It was pretty much just a tap. I feel fine." She doesn't. The pain in her head makes her pretty sure she's about to vomit up her Gatorade.

"You better not be lying."

"I'm not, I'm not." A faceoff in the offensive end fortunately halts that line of questioning.

Bergeron wins the drop cleanly, and pulls the puck back to the point. Chara lets loose a rocket that deflects off a defender in front of the goal and finds the top left corner of the net. Jane lets out a cheer that resounds through the small apartment, and Riley holds her bottle out for her to clink with her Gatorade. "She _is_ only looking out for us, you know."

Jane pulls a pillow onto her lap and punches it into shape. "Well, I'd be more okay with that if it didn't end up with me out of uniform."

"You take your rest, I guarantee you'll be back in the lineup soon. Anyway, it was just an exhibition, no big deal, aight?"

"I hate missing out on playing time, though," she whines, turning on her side, stretching her legs out, and stuffing her pillow under her head. "It's not fair. She's not fair." The buzzer goes to end the second period, and Riley tugs the blanket out from under Jane's legs and tosses it over top of her.

"I know, kid." She squeezes Jane's feet through the cover. "I'm gonna head out, okay? I've got the early shift tomorrow. I'll be by before I leave to make sure you're up, and _please_ don't sleep on the couch."

"I won't." They both know it's a lie. Jane has two states, perpetual action and perpetual inertia, and if left alone she'll stick in whichever zone she's chosen.

"You _know_ it's no good for recovery."

"Yes, Ma."

Riley groans, then picks up the remote and switches off the TV before placing it on the kitchen counter. "I'm just across the hall if you need anything, aight?"

She rolls her eyes. "I know where you live, Riley, you don't need to remind me."

"Well, you _do_ supposedly have a head injury."

"Shuddup." Jane frowns and pulls the blanket tighter around herself.

Riley rolls her eyes. "Good game out there today, rookie. You looked big time."

She tilts her head up to take a sip of her drink, and then smirks. "Too bad I was the only one."

Riley pauses with her hand on the doorframe and shakes her head, holding back a grin. "Watch yourself there, Rizzo. Keep going after me like that and someone might think you're gunning for a position as a benchwarmer."

She yawns and burrows her head into her pillow. "Whatever gets me closest to the ice," she mumbles, and Riley's hearty laugh from the hallway is the last thing she hears before she's out cold.

**RI**

"Hey babe, how was the game?"

She cringes at the endearment, has told him often enough that she prefers he stick to her name, but he's never listened, never made the change. "It was a loss."

"Shit. It was just exhibition, though, right?"

She nods as she opens the refrigerator and pulls out the makings of a kale salad. He doesn't reply, engrossed as he is in the hockey game he's got playing at maximum volume on her TV. They seem to have fallen into a pattern of opposing shifts at work and awkward silences at home, so much so that she's begun to think of it as _her_ home again, instead of _theirs_. She doesn't really want to analyze what that means quite yet.

She digs a lunch container out of one of the drawers by the stove and makes a mental note to ask him to stack the boxes more carefully when he next puts away the dishes. The salad goes into the box and then into her shoulder bag and she crosses by the back of the couch, kissing him on the cheek as she heads towards the stairs.

A loud cheer echoes through the house, and she shakes her head when he whoops again. He's always been vocal during games, despite knowing his words are neither going to help nor hinder the team. It's irritating, really.

She picks out a set of clothes from her closet to wear the next morning and folds them away into her bag before making her way downstairs. He looks up as she walks past, though a glance determines that it's likely only because the match has gone to a commercial break. "You leaving already? We haven't had dinner."

She slides into her fall jacket and zips it to the chin before answering. "I've got the night shift today; you knew that. There's a plate in the fridge for you to heat up."

He rolls his eyes and turns back to the screen. "Well, between the ER and the Blades, it just seems like you're never around."

She shrugs and heads for the door, mumbling under her breath, "Well, maybe it's better that way."


	3. Chapter 2

When Maura arrives at the first aid room that's been functioning as her Blades office, the rookie is already seated outside the door. Slouched would probably be the better term; she's got her legs spread out in front of her, elbows balanced on her hips and neck cranked up as she flips through a stack of three or four papers and mouths words to herself. Her ball cap is swiveled around, holding messy hair back from her face. Maura can tell the second she catches sight of her, because all of a sudden her back is ramrod straight and she's stuffing the papers into the knapsack propped between her shoes.

"Doc." She leaps to her feet when Maura sticks her key in the lock, and leans one shoulder against the wall by the office door. The collar of her henley is folded under, and Maura resists the urge to reach out and fix it. She _needs_ to stop treating her team like they're her children, but hockey players are nothing if not a bunch of overgrown preteens. She can't help the maternal instinct that comes along with treating them. "Mornin'."

"How are you feeling, Rizzoli?"

"Like a million bucks?" She notes that it's more a question than a statement, which doesn't really instill much trust in her.

"Made of paper and thus inherently fragile?" She chuckles to herself and swings the door open, motioning Jane inside.

Jane squints at her. "Uh, no...? I feel great...? It's a saying...?" She shakes her head briefly. "Never mind. I feel good. Ready for full contact."

"You sure you're feeling okay? You do remember that there's no bodychecking in this league?"

"Of course I do, I meant going all out..." She trails off as she peers at Maura, probably noticing that she looks entirely too pleased with herself. "Oh, you're just screwing with me. Good one." Her tone is anything but sincere.

She points at the folding chair set up by her worn-out desk. "Could you take a seat, please?"

Jane winks as she drops heavily into the chair. "Anything for you, boss."

Maura sighs, working hard not to roll her eyes, and passes over a clipboard. _Preteens_. "Fill out the survey, just like before."

It should take her at the very least two minutes to go through evaluating the symptoms, especially this close after the date of injury, but Jane hands the sheet back to her fourteen seconds later. She glances down to see she's just drawn a rectangle around the column of zeroes, and bites back a sigh. So, that's how this is going to go.

**Blades**

She shifts back and forth on the metal chair, trying to find a position that's even _slightly_ more comfortable than her previous one, but it's looking like that's an impossibility. Isles peers down at her SCAT sheet with a frown, and Jane considers that she might have filled it out a bit too quickly to appear realistic. Whatever.

Isles tucks a lock of hair that's escaped her ponytail back behind her ear before smoothing down the front of her Blades hoodie, and Jane spins her pen between her fingers. The sweater and khakis look... wrong... on her, especially considering she'd worn heels to the game on the weekend, but it's five-thirty on a Thursday morning, and no one can be held accountable for what they wear when they've gotta be at the rink before the sun comes up. She drums the end of the pen on her palm and doesn't realize she's been unconsciously pumping her knee until Isles reaches out and pushes down on it firmly. "You're making the desk vibrate."

She smirks, half-apologetic, and shrugs. "So...?"

Isles winks. "_So_, if no one can read my writing because you've made it illegible, you're never going to get off injured reserve."

Her head snaps up at that, the muscles in her neck complaining distantly. "You're clearing me?"

"That's not what I said." She pulls a thin file from the desk drawer. "The results of your ImPACT test-"

"My what?"

"The test you did earlier this week?"

"Oh, the one with the shapes and the matching? The one that snakes you hardcore?"

"Snakes you hardcore...?"

Jane pauses, peers at Isles, accepts that it's probably not exactly med school lingo. "Stabs you in the back. I thought it was fine and stuff, then out of nowhere it tries to make me remember words from, like, twenty minutes ago. What kinda crap is that?"

Isles arches her eyebrows. "That _is_ how delayed recall tests work, Rizzoli. Despite you being of the opinion that the test 'snaked' you, you did well on it. Did you bike on Monday?"

"Yeah," she replies with a smile. She'd biked Sunday, too, despite orders not to, but she's not about to tell her that. "It felt fine. Did some skating Tuesday, some passing yesterday, and here we are today."

"No headaches?"

"None." She reaches across her body to massage her upper traps, tilts her head to the side to get a good burn going. "It all felt great."

Isles studies her, and Jane sits up a bit straighter. "Susie said you went in to see her complaining of neck pain?"

"Yeah, that's just routine stuff, normal for me." It'd been a super weird encounter. The trainer had been far too enthusiastic about getting her shirt off, _honestly_.

"You're positive that's all it is?"

She shrugs her shoulder, digs her thumb deeper into the belly of her traps, the release spreading up the side of her neck. "Comes with the sport." She turns her head sharply to the side and there's a series of cracks down her spine. "Perfectly normal."

Isles purses her lips before nodding. "Could I get you to sit on the edge of the massage table, please?" She hops up on the end closest to her and kicks her heels against the metal while Isles grabs some equipment from the cupboard beside her desk. She'd rather just take a nap than run through the battery of tests yet again, but that's not going to get her out on the ice any faster.

"Whatdya want, finger to nose?" She touches the tip of her nose with her finger then reaches out, back then out again a couple of times. "Fist-chop-slap?"

"What I'd like is for you to wait until I can _see_ you complete the tests," Isles says, spinning around just as Jane's hand stills on her thigh.

"Worth a try," she replies with what is _supposed_ to be an endearing grin, though Isles seems anything but charmed by it. Riley's gonna get an earful about that.

"I'm going to read you a list of words. I'd like you to repeat them back to me when I've finished." She grabs the clipboard from the desk and stands in front of Jane. "Elbow, apple, carpet, saddle, bubble."

"Elbow-apple-carpet-saddle-bubble," Jane fires back, hands grasping the edge of the bed as she leans forward. "How'd I do? Can I go get dressed now?" She smirks at Isles.

"You know we've got six more sections to work through."

Jane flops backwards onto the bed. "Noooooooooo." She pushes herself up on her elbows, lifts her hat to sweep her hair back out of her face and then snugs it back on again, buckle sitting over her forehead, cool against her skin. "Alrighty, let's get this over with then."

**Blades**

"How's Rizzoli doing?"

Maura looks up from her desk, the end of her pen tapping against the wood as she purses her lips. "Frankly, she's rather difficult to work with."

Korsak narrows his eyes at her, the corner of his lips turning up just a smidgen. "I meant health-wise."

"Oh." She flushes and shuffles through the folders stacked on her desk. "Of course. Return to play. She claims she's been asymptomatic through each of the steps, but I'm not entirely certain that she's telling the truth."

He nods slowly. "And yet you've gotta trust her."

She grimaces. "And, yet, I have to trust her. Her ImPACT test scores are better than her preseason baseline, and even if she's lying about her symptoms on the SCAT3, she's still scoring full points on all the tests."

"Even the concentration?"

"She went all the way up to six digits with no errors."

"So she's not concussed?"

"You misunderstand me. The data points towards that conclusion, but I don't believe she's at the level of functionality that she claims she is." There's something not right about the situation, and she can't quite put her finger on it.

"We need her on the ice, Maura. Are you going to clear her or not?"

She sighs and presses at her temples with the pads of her fingers. There's a migraine building up in the back of her head. "There's nothing that's shown up in the tests that indicates to me that I shouldn't."

He nods. "You're sure she's healthy enough to be out in full contact?"

"As sure as I can be." Which, when she thinks about it, isn't very sure at all, but the pressure's there and she's never been the greatest with authority figures. "I'll have the clearance form filled out for you before practice starts."

**Blades**

Rizzoli raises her stick in salute when she passes Maura's spot on the bench. The grin that threatens to split the rookie's face in two does nothing to help allay her concerns about the situation, but she still offers a smile and a wave from her hip in return. With that childish glee, it's too hard not to.


	4. Chapter 3

**Thanks for all the follows and reviews**

**Mholder, your question is discussed here**

**First section of a two (or three, depending on how I cut it) part roadtrip**

**RI**

Jane slumps on the floor, her head pillowed on a duffel bag and feet balanced on the wall. She tosses a stress ball from hand to hand before flinging it backwards over her head with a weak "Coop!" A hand enters her vision, stress ball gripped in its fingers, and then Riley settles down beside her and leans against the wall. "Does it usually take this long?"

She reaches over and shakes Jane's knee with a wry smile. "Hang in there, rook, Korsak's almost got the bags checked, then we can go through security."

Jane groans and tugs the collar of her jacket up over her face. "I just want to be able to nap without getting woken up to move," she grumbles, her voice muffled by the fabric.

"What are you, five?"

She yawns, and her coat slips down off her chin. "More like fresh off a twelve hour shift."

Riley cringes. "Damn, I'd forgotten your schedule was crap this week. That's always rough. But Isles says we're not supposed to sleep until we land in Calgary."

Jane picks her head up and makes eye contact, frowning. "Isles says a lot of stuff, not all of it relevant."

Riley leans forward and flicks her ear. "Play nice, Rizzo. She's the best doc we've got."

"She's the _only_ doc we've got."

"Remember at the academy, how Weston would just bring out a roll of duct tape and a couple of Advils if one of us went down and stayed down? I'm thinking a fully certified trauma surgeon is a _bit_ of a step up from that."

Jane sits up straight, dropping her feet down from the wall. "She's a _trauma surgeon_?"

"That's what I just said. Works over at Mass Gen."

"But you're telling me _Isles_ is a trauma surgeon?" She hugs her knees to her chest, eyebrows climbing her forehead. She can't make sense of it in her mind, the two images just won't click, and thinking about it only serves to make her brain ache.

"What, did all the knocks to the head make you hard of hearing?"

She sighs, smacks the side of Riley's knee. "That was like a month ago, can you get over it? And isn't she our age? I thought she was an athletic therapist or something."

"She's only a couple years older, twenty-four, I think. She was finishing up her fellowship last year, so I'm pretty sure she's fully certified now."

"What the hell? That's gotta be ten years of studying after high school, how the heck did she manage that?"

"She's a genius, Rizz, that's all there is to it. You wanna know more, why don't ya go ask."

"Trauma surgeon," she whispers to herself, watching Isles where she stands at the check-in desk with Korsak. She raises her voice enough for Riley to hear. "It's just, you wouldn't think that to look at her, y'know?"

Riley tosses the stress ball up and snags it out of the air. "She can be a bit of a badass when she wants to. Last year at practice one of the vets broke her tib and fib, it was nasty, and while everyone's trying not to vomit she's taking complete control of the situation like it's nothing. Bone sticking right out through her sock and Isles is working away on it blank-faced, unfazed. It was kinda scary, to be honest."

"I bet," she mumbles, eyes still fixed on the pair across the room. _No wonder she's such a hardass, she's used to dealing with much worse crap than this. _

**RI**

When Jane comes off the ice her face is pale and she looks as though she's about to vomit. She waves Maura away when she crouches down on the bench beside her, but the blood staining the thin fabric of her jersey is bright, shining wet under the floodlights. Maura makes sure her gloves are on securely and tugs on her sleeve, and Jane wrenches away from her.

"I'm _fine_."

The fabric tears free at her pull, rips away from where it's been plastered to her arm by blood, and her breath whistles out slowly between pursed lips. "We need to go to the clinic." The laceration is relatively shallow, to be fair, but it's also four or five inches long, and at that length 'relatively shallow' is still deep enough to need to be stitched up. The feeling in her chest is achingly familiar, oncoming adrenaline despite the debatable severity of the injury.

"No, we _don't_." She pins her glove under her arm and pulls her hand free, then grabs the hem of her sleeve and drags it back down her forearm. Maura closes her eyes and breathes in slowly through her nose.

"Rizzoli."

"Isles."

Jane moves to slide away from her, but Maura's fingers loop in the cage of her helmet almost of their own accord, and she turns Jane to face her. "Get up off the bench." She doesn't even attempt to hold back the hardness in her voice; this has to be the most frustratingly immature thing she's ever experienced while working with the Blades. "Now."

She growls incomprehensibly, glares at her through the bars, but steps over the bench when Maura stands and allows her to lead her towards the exit, fingers still curled through the cage.

"I'm fine," Jane protests again, once they're in the hallway to the dressing rooms and Maura has released her grip on her helmet. "I'm okay."

Maura grabs the front of her jersey roughly and leads her towards the clinic, the sound of Jane's skates clicking on the rubber tiling echoing in her ears. She'd given up on treating stubborn athletes with soft hands long ago; when injured most don't react to anything but the firmest of voices and contact, and Rizzoli's proven to be worse than 'most'. "You have a five inch gash down your arm."

"It's that big? _Sweet_."

"You saw it earlier..." She can't put her finger on what's not quite right, so she shakes her head and turns to find a massive grin on Jane's face. "You're at the risk of blood loss and infection. That's not 'sweet'. Trying to stay in the game when you've got an injury could be harmful to you, your teammates, and your opponents, not to mention downright irresponsible."

Jane scrunches her nose with a frown. "It-"

"'It' _nothing_. Sit down." Maura settles her hand in the middle of Jane's chest and pushes her onto the massage bed in the centre of the room. She unsnaps Jane's helmet and tugs it free of her head, then settles it on the floor, ignoring the face Jane gives her.

"I coulda done that myself."

Maura shakes her head and slips her hand up the loose jersey sleeve. "Not with one hand." The fabric is bonded to the wound and she carefully slides her fingers around the edges to loosen it. She pulls the blood-soaked sleeve up, exposing the slash, and takes off Jane's elbow pad. Maura traces the boundaries of the wound with her fingertip; it's deeper than she had originally thought. "I'm going to stitch this up now."

"I'm going back in the game after."

"We'll talk about that when I'm done." Maura pulls a suture kit from the rolling cabinet by the table and lays it open on the bed. She pulls up a stool and sits outside of Jane's knee, dons a new pair of gloves and gets to work.

**RI**

She bangs her fist lightly on the padded top of the table, draws her bottom lip between her teeth and bites down hard. She can taste blood in her mouth. "_Fuck_."

Isles catches her eye, her tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth, and raises a single eyebrow. "I thought you were some big, tough hockey player."

"That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt when you stick a needle in me without painkillers."

"I applied a topical anesthetic, and if you want anything stronger than ibuprofen to take orally then you're not going back out on the ice."

Jane groans and goes back to tapping the bed, this time with her open palm. "Well, the anesthetic doesn't appear to be working."

"That's because it's not a very strong formula."

She digs her fingertips into the padding when Isles drives the needle through her skin again. "There a reason for that?"

"It's all we have in the medical kit."

"Sure, sure." She dips her head and gnaws at her lip. Isles' touch burns along her skin, and Jane shivers. It doesn't feel like there's an anesthetic on her arm at _all_.

Isles fiddles with her tools for a moment before breaking the silence. "What happened out there? There wasn't a moment I saw where this could have happened, and the referees didn't call a penalty on anyone."

"It was behind the play." She raises a shoulder, trying not to smile. She might've been sliced open, but she wouldn't take it back for anything. "I kinda got caught up with one of their players after they took a swing at Matty, and a bit of hacking was involved. Shit happens, it doesn't always get called, that's the game. Refs can't see everything, don't think some stuff's rough enough to be penalized. Sometimes you've gotta work it out yourself."

Isles stares at her, head tilted to the side. "You call sixteen sutures in your arm 'working it out'?"

"Nah, I call it badass." Isles rolls her eyes and looks down, tugs on the stitch harder than is probably needed. Jane winces, head pounding at the sudden jolt of pain. "Shit. Was that really necessary?"

"Was _what_ really necessary?" There's a glint in her eye.

"_Christ_. Okay. That slash cutting me open was accidental. No need to get all worked up over it." Jane moves her free hand to her temple, presses down hard against the skin. The new pain, centred around the point of contact, is a welcome relief from both her arm and from her head. A sighs slips from her lips.

"A lot of the stuff that happens to you is be 'accidental', but I don't seem to be sewing up anybody else who's gotten into accidents out there." Isles drops her needle driver on the side table and snips the stitch a half centimeter from Jane's arm.

She shrugs and smirks. "Maybe I just don't play quite the way they do."

Isles gives her a bemused look. "Why don't you? How you're playing now isn't working out for your body."

"It's all I know." She hisses when Isles dabs Polysporin along the length of the wound, almost jerks away from her touch before she forces herself to still. "I'm all about the muck and grind, going hard in the corners. I know that's likely to get me a bit roughed up, but it also _works_ for me. It's the only way I know how to play."

Isles layers the cut with gauze and then wraps a tensor around it all, all while shaking her head. The faint sound of the buzzer comes from the rink. "I'm sure there's some change in playing style you could make to go from 'perpetually injured' to 'typically injured'."

"Ha. Ha." Jane straps her elbow pad back on while Isles peels off her gloves. "It's go hard or go home with me, I'm not gonna play it any other way." She tugs her jersey back down, frowning when her hand comes away smeared with blood and then taking the towel Isles offers to soak most off it up. "So, you gonna clear me for the third?"

Isles takes forever to zip up the suture kit and put it away, and Jane's nerves ratchet up. She can almost feel the stick in her hands. "How's your pain level?"

"I'm fine, it's fine." She slips one hand into a glove, then the other.

"You don't want stronger pain medicine?"

"No, I'm good."

Isles sticks her hands in her pockets. "The laceration was superficial, and flexing your forearm shouldn't cause the sutures to tear out. If you don't need the medication to deal with your pain levels, then I see no reason why you can't go back in the game."

Jane throws her hand out for a fistbump that Isles accepts warily. "Thanks, doc!" She's almost at the door before Isles' voice halts her in her tracks.

"You forgot your helmet."

**RI**

**Kspecial, this is a bit late cause I didn't see that for a while, thanks for your concern, I just went (and am going) through some pretty tough injury stuff that really interfered with how I was writing and how I felt about my writing that made me frustrated enough to quit it for a bit**


	5. Chapter 4

The muscles in Jane's neck are tender, tight, and she rolls her head around to try and provide some relief. It's when her vertebrae pop and the surrounding tissues feel a bit looser that she realizes everything else aches as well. She curls her toes and shivers gently. She's doing everything she can to deal with that problem right now.

A sad sigh slips from her lips, and Jane tilts her head roughly to the side, basks in the sickening crackle that resounds off the bathroom walls. None of this is right. It's not _fair_. Minus her first year of playing, this is probably her longest dry spell. It's been seven games with the team and she's yet to pot a goal. She feels a step slow, a half second out of place, and maybe it's that the league takes a bit of getting used to, but maybe it's something else. Something worse.

Hot tears burn tracks down her cheeks, unbidden, and she brushes at them roughly. Her fingertips linger over the bone bruise that's sat on her chin since the high stick, and she prods at it for a moment, triggering pain through her jaw, before letting her hand fall away. It's not supposed to be like this. Not for the first overall draft pick. She's supposed to be getting big minutes and scoring big goals. She's supposed to be healthy. She's supposed to be _okay_.

She's a goal-scorer, that's why she's here, maybe a bit of power forward too, but a goal scorer first and foremost. And if she's not putting the puck in the net, then what reason do they have to keep her around?

She drops her head back against the tiled wall of the tub, winces at how the contact jars her, shifts to keep her bandaged arm free of the water. All the movement stirs the ice around, recirculating the colder water, and she jerks her knees up to her chest, cursing under her breath. She's never going to get used to submerging her lower body in eff'n freezing cold water; even once everything on the outside's gone numb she's still chilled to the bone.

"Rizz, we're gonna be late for dinner!"

The shout startles her, and she sits straight up in the tub. "I'm finishing my ice bath, take a chill pill."

Riley pokes her head around the corner and pulls a face. "What crawled up your butt and died, jeez."

"Just go ahead without me."

Riley enters the bathroom and takes a seat on the edge of the bath. "What's wrong, kid? Arm in pain?"

She shakes her head and swipes at her runny nose. "I'm good, go down and I'll catch up."

"Christ, you're allowed to have effing feelings, Jane. What's wrong?" Her tone says she's not going to take 'nothing' for an answer. "Are you in pain, is it emotional, what?"

Jane grabs the shower bar and pulls herself up, water dripping from her spandex. "Grab me a towel?" Riley crosses the room and tosses one back, then leans against the door frame with her arms crossed. Jane steps out onto the bath mat on shaky legs and begins to dry off, her teeth chattering. "I just, I... I don't feel like I'm chipping in out there."

"On the ice?"

She nods, pulls the fluffy towel tight around herself as she shivers. "I don't feel effective."

"Well, you haven't been."

Jane stares at Riley, mouth gaping. "Screw you too."

She backpedals furiously. "That's not how I- Just hear me out." Jane brushes past her, gathering together a change of clothes. "At the Academy, you were playing against girls three or four years younger than you. It's a huge step to go from there to playing against Olympians everyday. It takes some getting used to. It doesn't really help you that you've had some injury trouble, cause you're not getting consistent time out there with me and Erin to gel as a line. It'll come, y'know?"

She goes back into the washroom and locks the door behind her. "I know, I just wish it wasn't taking so freaking long."

**RI**

She's stacking her plate up with all the carbs she can get her hands on when Isles catches her eye and shakes her head, hard. The doc stops fiddling with her cutlery and approaches the buffet table, looking ready for business.

"Half of that pasta goes back."

"But it's part of my routine," Jane mutters, pushing her plate out of Isles' reach. She does see how the doc could find issue with the mountain of penne, but she's been eating the same meal before the night before a game since she was seven, and she's not about to stop now.

"I don't care. If you eat all of that, you'll be sluggish tomorrow. You sat through the same diet lecture as all your teammates at the beginning of the season; I don't understand why you're the only one who's not following it. Half the pasta goes back, take another chicken breast instead, and don't even _think_ about going for a second helping of dessert."

"Yes, _Ma_." She scrapes the pasta back into the dish with a frown, if only to get the orders to stop. "How come Korsak gets to eat that monstrosity?"

"Though Vince's diet could do with a little less red meat and judicious consumption of carbohydrates, he's not the one who's playing in another match tomorrow."

Jane stabs a fork through a particularly sad-looking chicken breast and slams it down onto her plate. Tomato sauce splatters across her bandaged forearm and she groans. "Since when are _you_ our nutritionist, anyway? Thought that was Susie's job."

"I took a double major in school," Isles says offhand, stepping around Jane to fill a plate with salad. "Susie just ran the nutrition lecture during preseason because I was working." She motions towards the ruined bandages. "Come to my room after dinner and we'll change out the dressing."

Jane frowns, but nods. "Alright."

"Room 208 at 7:45."

"I'll be there."

**RI**

She knocks sharply on the door, once, twice, and is about to turn and head back to her room when it swings open. Susie Chang motions her inside.

The room is packed to the brim with equipment; there's a massage table set up between one bed and the window, an ice-filled camp cooler sits with lid askew beside the entertainment centre, and four suitcase-sized trainers bags occupy space on the floor, their contents spread around the room.

Susie looks frazzled as she goes back to working on Matty's back, the goalie lying face down on the massage table while a pair of defenders are perched on the nearby bed with a deck of cards dealt out in front of them and bags of ice taped to various extremities. Isles, on the other hand, surrounded by rolls of athletic tape and tensor bandages, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, looks completely in her element. She's fixing up Jane's linemate's shoulder, pulling Erin's arm around in what appears to be an attempt to get her shoulder blade to fall into place.

Jane sits on the edge of the bed and exchanges fist bumps with the defencemen (who are playing War, of all things). She's still not sure which is which; she knows they don't look that much alike but they're inseparable on and off the ice, and that's enough to screw her up. Trying to make names and nicknames stick has been like trying to fill a sieve with water, so she's lucky nobody's put her on the spot about identifying who's who.

She fiddles with the fraying end of her tensor bandage while Isles finishes up with Erin, and makes a face at her linemate. "You good, Er?"

"Doing great, kid." Her face fades from pain to relief as Isles manipulates her arm again, the movement accompanied by a crackle, and Jane laughs.

"Doing better _now_, at least." She taps Erin softly on the knee, grinning. "It's-"

"Johnson, you're done for now," Isles interrupts with a blank face, passing her a bag of ice and then motioning at the defense pairing. "Get one of those two to tape this on you, then leave it on for twenty minutes. Rizzoli, you're up."

"Alright, alright, chill." She switches positions with Erin and Isles pulls the ice cooler in front of her, taking a seat on it and laying out new dressings on Jane's knee.

"I'm cool enough as is, thanks." Isles winks at her and pulls the tape free of her bandage. "How's your pain level been?"

She shies away slightly as the fabric pulls loose, hissing through clenched teeth. "A four or five, I guess..."

"Oh, you'll actually admit that to me now?" Isles strips off the gauze, and Jane kind of wants to knock that cocky grin off her face.

"I figured it'd be the only way to get you to stop annoying me." She knocks her heels hard against the bed and tries not to curse when Isles removes the last piece of bandaging, slowly tearing it free where it's bonded to the cut.

"It's also the way to get me to respect you a bit more."

Jane shrugs, glancing down at the black stitches criss-crossing her arm. "Whatever. How's it looking, Doogie?"

Isles pauses with an alcohol wipe in her hand. "What did you call me?"

"Doogie?" Isles stares at her blankly. "Like Doogie Howser?" She shakes her head when she doesn't get a reaction. "Never mind."

"Explain it," Isles prompts, swiping the wipe across Jane's arm and laughing quietly when she jerks away. "It will help keep your mind off this."

"It was a TV show about a sixteen-year-old surgeon, he ends up being a trauma surgeon by around nineteen. I thought it was appropriate." Jane admires the cut; the stitches look almost perfect and (unfortunately) she doesn't imagine there will be much scarring. "What do you mean, keep my mind off that? It's not so painful that I need to ignore it."

"Oh, I understand now, though I wasn't nineteen when I became certified in trauma." She pushes away Jane's hand where it's been drifting towards the wound. "Scoring five is usually around the level of needing to ignore the injury for most people."

Jane smirks and taps Isles' hip. "Well, Doogie, I'm not most people."

"So I've learned." Isles shifts away from her touch and opens a tube of Polysporin, smearing it liberally over the wound. "Most people are smart enough to step out of a game when they're injured."

Normally Jane would let the comment slide, but the tone is sharp enough that she doesn't want to let it go. "I know how hurt I have to be to get to the point where I'm ineffective," she spits, taking fresh gauze from Isles' hand and slapping it on her arm herself.

"Except when you're concussed. Or in shock." Isles contemplates fighting her for a moment before handing over a new tensor bandage. Jane quickly unrolls it around her arm; it's getting far too warm in this room for her liking, she'd like to be out sooner rather than later.

"I wasn't concussed," she protests. It sounds weak even to her own ears. "I might've been in shock today, but I _wasn't_ concussed." After all, she _couldn't _have been concussed if she didn't acknowledge it, right? Right.

"Whatever you want to believe, Jane." She holds down the edge of the tensor, and Isles loops tape around to secure the bandage. "The science says concussion."

Jane smooths down the front of her shirt and stands, skirting around Isles. "The science is flawed. Thanks for the tape-up, doc. Night." She's sure that if she stays any longer she might throw a punch.

And she's _certain_ she can feel Isles' eyes on the back of her neck when she stalks out of the room.


	6. Chapter 5

**Thank you to everyone for the feedback!**

Her heels kick up behind her easily as she sprints. _Man_, does she love a good foot race. Cool air tearing a path through her lungs, lactic acid burning hot in her quads, it's the closest she's ever been able to get to the adrenaline she experiences on the ice. The pistol hanging heavy at her hip only makes it even more exciting, more exhilarating, more _everything_.

She cuts down an alley to her left and picks up the pace, books it down the pavement and slides to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk the next road over. She draws her gun, almost has it up when the perp barrels into her, bashing her in the mouth with his forearm, and she's falling to the side. She hits the ground face-first and rolls to her knees, spitting out a mouthful of blood.

"_Shit_."

Jane sweeps her hands around until they contact her gun, and she picks it up, holsters it, and regains her feet. She stumbles after the perp, trying to shake the fog from her head, and a gunshot rings out from behind her. She fancies she can feel the bullet whizz by her ear and she glances up to see the guy trip, drop to his knees, and fall flat on his face. Red blossoms along the back of his sweater.

"Christ, Frostie!" He brushes past her, shoving his gun in the holster, and skids to a halt beside the fallen criminal.

"I didn't mean-" He shouts, his hands flailing through the air as he tries to work up the nerve to apply pressure to the gunshot wound. Jane reaches his side and nudges him out of the way.

"I know, I know, I got this, call it in," she mumbles, placing her palm over top of the bullet hole and pressing down hard, the blood hot against her skin. There's a crackle of static behind her, followed by the urgency of Frost's strangled voice. She dips her head, and tries to keep from vomiting as the perp's exhalation causes bubbles to rise up through the blood seeping between her fingers.

**RI**

"Officer, you can step away." The stretcher's been rolled into ER intake area, and a doctor shoves into the space between her and the bars. She staggers back, flexes her hands, the crusted blood crackling off her skin. The tone is familiar, and she digs back through her memory in an attempt to place the voice. It comes almost immediately. _Isles_.

"GSW to the chest, his thoracic cavity is stiff, there's probably some internal bleeding." Isles waves a hand at the paramedic and rocks her other palm across the perp's chest. Jane presses her back up against the wall, tries to stay standing, and Frost joins her side, his face pale.

"If you're gonna throw up, go outside."

He flips her the bird (his other hand covers his mouth). "I'm fine," he groans between his fingers, cheeks tinged with green.

"I need a cardiothoracic surgeon in here, stat!" Isles cracks open an opaque bottle and sloshes iodine across the perp's chest, and Jane smirks at Frost.

"I'm _sure_ you are, just like you were at the scene. But, in case you're not, I think you've got about five seconds before she slices his chest open right here." He swallows loudly and all but sprints towards the ER doors.

Isles tears the wrapping off a scalpel and settles her fingers around the handle. Jane shifts to the right, peers around her side as she touches the tip of the blade to the perp's chest. It slices through skin easily, the flesh falling apart beneath the edge like butter under a hot knife.

A gloved hand slips easily beneath the skin as blood gurgles up out of the incision. Isles reaches out her other hand without looking up, a curt "Suture" echoing through the ER as a greying man pushes through a set of swinging doors. A nurse presses a needle into Isles' fingers as he approaches the stretcher, and she calls for suction and dives back in.

"Dr. Isles, I can take over now."

Isles glares up at the newcomer, still buried up to her wrists in the perp's chest. "I'm holding my patient's aorta in my hands, Dr. Pike, so I'd like to throw a couple sutures in it before you step in, if that's okay with you." She moves quickly, efficiently, and she's removing her hands just shortly after she's completed her sentence. "There you go, head on up to the OR. I'll meet you there."

He grabs one side of the stretcher and fixes her with an unimpressed stare that Jane can only imagine is being matched by one just as ice cold from Isles. "Your choice of treatment was highly irregular, Dr. Isles."

Isles strips off her blood-drenched gloves and balls them up, tossing them into a medical waste bin. "My patient came in with a gunshot to the back that somehow managed to nick his aorta, yet not sever it enough that he died of hemorrhage in transit, Dr. Pike. Nothing about this is regular." She turns her back on the stretcher and strides towards Jane. "Officer?"

Jane meets her gaze with a smile and a quick wave. "Officer Rizzoli, at your service."

Isles looks off-kilter for a moment, but pulls herself together in the blink of an eye. "Officer, there's a surgical waiting area on the next floor where you can stay while your suspect is in surgery. We'll send someone out to keep you updated on his condition."

"Alright alright alright, thanks, scalpel jockey."

Isles doesn't even attempt to hide her eye roll before turning and taking off after the stretcher.

**RI**

"Officers?" Jane and Frost stand and turn in unison to face the doors to the OR floor when Isles bursts out from between them. Her hair is tucked back under a patterned scrub cap, and her face is flushed.

"How'd he do in there? Iceman here notch his first fatality?" Jane grins and elbows her partner in the side.

"Coming from the most gun shy cop out there today." Frost punches her lightly in the shoulder, laughing to himself.

"Shuddup, I woulda taken the shot if he hadn't run me over first." She pulls a face at him before looking back at Isles. "So, how's our guy?"

"Your... 'guy'... pulled through; he's still in critical condition and he'll be going up to the ICU after he's closed up. A nurse will be out to take you up there." Isles slides her gown off and balls it up, tossing it into a nearby laundry bin. She motions towards Jane's face. "Has anyone taken a look at you yet, Rizzoli? Your forehead is bleeding."

She shrugs. "I, uh, didn't think it was that bad." She swears she hears Isles mutter "typical" under her breath. "And I was supposed to wait for the perp to come out of surgery. Didn't know if I'd have time to get checked out."

"There should be an empty exam room down the hall."

Jane picks at the blood plastering her hair to her forehead and shrugs. "Aight. Frost, you got this?"

He smirks at her and looks pointedly towards the OR doors when they swing open again and the unconscious perp is wheeled through. "Does he _look_ like he's going anywhere?"

"Valid point." She motions towards Isles. "Lead the way, Doogie."

Isles lets out a heavy sigh, tucks her hands in the pockets of her lab coat, and walks away down the hall, quickly enough that Jane almost has to jog to keep up. She finds herself on an exam bed with Isles standing beside her legs tugging on a pair of nitrile gloves.

"We've _got_ to stop meeting like this."

Isles unwraps a suture kit and lays it out flat on the rolling tray beside her. "That's on you, Rizzoli."

"Last time, I promise," she laughs, reaching back to knock on the wooden cabinet beside the exam table. The movement makes it feel like the ground is falling out from under her, so she rights herself quickly and inhales in through her nose.

Isles presses at her puffy lip, her touch gentle. "Any pain?"

"Jus' tender," Jane slurs as Isles rolls her lip down to expose her teeth. She runs her tongue around her mouth. "Everything feels intact." She licks Isles' fingers before she has a chance to pull them away.

"That's disgusting, Rizzoli." She frowns while switching out her gloves, but there's laughter in her eyes. "Are you actually a child, or do you just act like one?"

"If you're gonna stick something into my mouth, I'm probably gonna lick it. I don't usually get complaints about that."

Isles groans and rips open an alcohol swab, wiping at the dried blood splattered along Jane's cheek. "If anything, you've got the sense of humour of a preteen boy."

"And the maturity to match," she jokes with a grin, sweeping her hair back so Isles can get better access to her forehead. "Never did grow up."

"That does seem to be the case with a lot of you hockey players." She dabs at the blood crusted in Jane's eyebrow and then sets the swab aside.

She bites her lip when Isles applies freezing to the gash. "What do you expect? You guys tell us when to nap, what to eat, where to be and when. Maybe to a lesser degree than the guys in the big leagues, but it still happens."

Comprehension dawns on Isles' face. "You're stuck in a perpetual adolescence." She picks up the needle and rests one hand on Jane's forehead. "We treat you like children so often that it's no wonder you younger ones still act like them."

Jane scrunches her eyes closed, her breathing shallow. "However you wanna look at it. I haven't got much impulse control. Real life consequences to actions feel pretty insignificant when you're on the ice, and that seems to bleed through a bit if you don't keep it in check."

"Is that why you're so flippant about your injuries?"

She laughs softly. "Since you've got a needle about an inch from my eye, I'm gonna have to plead the fifth."

**RI**

Isles exits the perp's room and slides her tablet into the pocket of her lab coat. Jane unfolds from her perch on the chair back, settles her holster at her waist as she approaches the doctor. "Hey, you have time to grab something to eat?"

"Are you asking me out on a date, Rizzoli?"

"What? _No_." She stares at Isles in bewilderment. "Fucking hell, I just meant as thanks for throwing the stitches in my eyebrow pro bono."

"I did that as a professional courtesy."

"Then let me buy you breakfast as a professional courtesy."

"Are you sure you should be leaving him alone?" Isles deflects, motioning towards the perp. "Don't you need to keep him in custody?"

"He just had open heart surgery and he's handcuffed to the bed, I'm sure he's not about to get up and walk out of here." Isles opens her mouth, presumably ready with some counter argument, and Jane chuckles. "My partner should be back in a couple minutes, then I've got a breakfast break. How do you feel about waffles?"

"I don't recall actually agreeing to this course of action."

Jane shoots finger guns her way (and then instantly regrets it and hides her hands behind her back). "I'm Jane Rizzoli, how could you resist?"

"Easily, I imagine." A smile tugs at the corner of Isles' mouth when Jane staggers back, a hand clutched over her heart.

"You wound me."

"I would think you do that well enough on your own." Isles taps a hand on the doorframe of the perp's room. "He should wake up in half an hour or so, but I don't know that he'll be ready for questioning today; the bullet went through his lung."

"I'll be sure to pass that on," Jane replies, hooking her thumbs through her belt loops and swaying from heels to toes. "So, no to breakfast?"

"It's a no to breakfast," Isles confirms, "but thanks for the offer."

"Whatever, just trying to be nice." She drops back into her seat. "Dammit," she mumbles once Isles is headed down the hall and out of earshot, "I was really craving futzing waffles."

**RI**

Her routine for coming home from a night shift is practiced, prepared, each step ingrained in her muscle memory due to months of repetition. Unplanned interruptions to this routine tend to ruin her following day.

When she opens the front door to find him stacking boxes in the entry way, she has the indistinct thought that this interruption is more likely to ruin her week.

"Where are you going?"

He picks up a rubber tote and walks towards her. "Home. Could you hold the door, please?"

She pulls it open, watches him trudge out to where his truck is parked on the curb. When he comes back up the walk, she asks, "For the night?"

"For a while." He leans against the wall and stuffs his hands in his pockets. "We both know we've been headed this way for a long time, it was only a matter of when it was that we'd finally get here."

She nods mutely, unbuttoning her coat, sliding it off and hanging it on the hook behind her. She rests her hand flat on the wall and drops her head, focusing on the toes of her shoes. "You were trying to leave before I got home," she spits.

"I-"

"You were. Is that all I'm worth to you?"

"Maura."

"Tom."

"You don't need to make a fight out of this."

"Then I won't." She perches on the bottom step of the stairs, elbows on her knees and chin cupped in her hands. "I'm not going to beg you to stay."

"Good, I wouldn't want you to."

Maura sits and watches him silently as he treks back and forth with packed boxes. She knows she should feel something, anger or resentment or _anything_, but instead there's apathy. She's resigned to what's happening before her, to the loss she's about to face. She knows he'd stop if she asks, like he has before, but she won't demean herself like that again. It's over. It has been for a while, they just hadn't said it out loud.

He exits the living room and sets a milk crate by the front door. "That's the last of it."

Maura sits up and nods hesitantly. "I'll see you around the hospital."

"Yeah, I'll see you." He gives an awkward wave and picks up the crate. The door swings shut behind him with a dull thud.

She's never felt as numb as she does in that moment.


	7. Chapter 6

The burn floods through her veins the moment her skates hit ice, and she's set free. Her blades slice across the crisp surface, singing in her ears, and she forgets. The pull of the stitches against her skin when she flexes her fingers, the drumming that's been a constant in the very back of her head, the aches and bruises of a hundred battles in the corner. It all flushes away, and she's faced with clarity.

Jane wouldn't usually be about taking to the ice at five thirty in the morning, especially with a practice at seven, but she's on the switch from nights over to days at the station and her sleep schedule is suffering as a result. And when she doesn't have to sacrifice an hour of sleep for an hour of skating she'll jump at the chance. The ice is in her blood.

Her crossovers are leisurely and exaggerated as she rounds the end boards, but when she hits the faceoff dot she changes her step and picks up the pace. Short, choppy steps carry her to the blue line, where powerful strides take their place.

After forty-five minutes, lactic acid burning in her thighs, she throws her foot up on top of the boards and leans forward, basking in the dull throb of the stretch. She drops her leg, grabs her water bottle and squirts a mouthful before balancing her other foot on the boards. A foot grabs the toe of her skate and shakes, and she looks up and grins at the doctor.

"Morning, doc."

Isles leans against the boards and raises her eyebrows. "You're in early today."

"I could say the same thing about you."

"I have paperwork to get through; what's your excuse?"

Jane drops her foot and rests her elbows on the boards. "I haven't had free time to work through my power skating drills yet this week, thought I'd take the opportunity."

"Did you get more than six hours of sleep last night?"

"Seven and a half, my clock's a bit outta sync with the real world right now." She pulls her helmet free and runs her fingers through her hair, slicking it back off her forehead, then loops her fingers through the cage and lets the helmet dangle over the ice. "Shift work and all."

"You're keeping yourself healthy? Eating enough and sleeping enough?"

She rolls her eyes and swings her helmet back and forth. "And getting my vitamins and hydrating and everything. I'm an adult, Isles. I know what I need and I can take care of myself. You don't need to babysit me."

"I'm just like to check up on my players, okay?"

"Gotcha, boss."

**RI**

Jane fumbles with the lid of the pill bottle, finally managing to pry it off on her third try. She swirls the bottle around, watching the tablets clink against the orange plastic, then turns it on its side above her hand, shaking three yellow oval pills out onto her palm.

A fourth skitters free when a tremor shoots through her hand, and jane swears under her breath as it bounces across the tiled floor of the bathroom and settles behind the toilet. She tosses back her head and tips the pills into her mouth before bending to the faucet to suck in a mouthful of water and swallow them.

Her head swims when she stoops down to recover the dropped pill, and she has to press her fist to the floor for a moment to steady herself before she comes back upright. The swallowed tablets feel like they're lodged in her throat, and after she drops the pill back into the bottle and screws on the lid she leans down to take another sip straight from the tap.

Her phone slides across the counter towards the edge of the sink and she turns off the faucet and shoves the pill bottle deep into the pocket of her sweatpants before picking up. "Rizzoli."

_"You're not working today, right?"_

She leans back against the counter and snugs her phone tighter to her ear. "Nah, thankfully. It looks like the Arctic out there."

_"So I'm assuming you're at home?"_

"Yeah, what's up?"

_"Then why the hell haven't you opened the door yet?"_

"Huh?" She pushes off the counter and heads out into the hallway.

_"I've been knocking for like five minutes, jeez."_

"I'm just surprised you haven't broken in yet." She crosses her common room, slides the chain free and turns the deadbolt. "That's your usual modus operandi." She swings the door wide open and shivers at the sudden gust of cold air that sweeps through her apartment.

Cooper hangs up and stores her cell in the pocket of her hoodie, then punches Jane in the shoulder. "_Someone_ threatened to super glue my keys to my face the next time I tried that."

"That would've been the least you deserved. You just waltzed right in without knocking. I could've had a girl over!"

Cooper smothers a snort and Jane fixes her with a stony-eyed glare. "Well, you didn't, so I don't see what the big problem was."

Jane rolls her eyes and flops down on the couch. "You got a reason for coming over here, or did you just feel like annoying the crap outta me before noon?"

Cooper walks to the kitchen and opens the fridge, crouching to rifle through the contents of the lower shelf. "Y'know how Matty's been keeping up a backyard rink all winter?"

"Yeah...?" Jane cranes her neck at the sound of a Tupperware being cracked open. "Hey, you better not be eating my leftovers."

"I'm out of groceries," she replies, her voice muffled by what Jane assumes is a mouthful of cold pizza.

"That was great planning on your part, whereas _I _was planning on eating that for dinner tonight."

"I didn't have any time to go shopping 'cause of work." The fridge door swings shut, and Cooper stacks boxes of food on the island. "Matty's inviting the team over for a game of pickup in an hour. You up for it?"

She smoothes her hands down her thighs, her right palm resting for a moment on top of the bump formed by her pill bottle. "I could go for some shinny, yeah." She shoves the bottle down off the front of her thigh and tries to push it to the back of her mind. "If you're gonna eat me out of house and home, at least sauce me the cannoli."

"Dessert before lunch? What would Isles say, Rizzo?" Riley shuffles through the containers and then tosses one Jane's way.

"'Scuse _me_, I ate already." She cracks the lid and stuffs one of the cannoli into her mouth whole, with a groan of pleasure. She chews, swallows, and licks her lips. "What're you doing home, anyway? I woulda thought you'd get called in on the big case homicide's working?"

"I worked with 'em on it yesterday, but today's essential personnel only cause of Snowmageddon." She shudders uncontrollably. "Glad I get a day off from that stuff. The Ortiz murder was freaky enough, let alone the Peyton killing on top of it." Cooper shakes her head and chews on the last bite of crust of her pizza slice thoughtfully. "We should head out soon, we're gonna have to dig out and walk over."

Jane wipes her hands on her pants and stands. "Alright, I'll get my stuff together." She walks towards her bedroom, then thinks better of it and turns to yell back, "Don't you dare touch that lasagna!"

**RI**

The petite figure sitting on the wooden bench next to the snowy rink is the last thing Jane thought she'd see when she and Cooper arrive at Matty's house. "What's she doing here?" She murmurs to Riley as she tosses her bag into the snow and takes a seat at the end of the bench opposite to Isles.

Riley shrugs as she unzips her duffel. "We're supposed to have a trainer at all team events that're on the ice, even if they're not official. Korsak would kill us if we didn't get her out."

"I've never seen Isles on skates," Matty chimes in, looking up from tightening the laces of her player skates. "Every time we've had a family skate or something she'd just be sitting on the bench with the first aid kit. I'm not sure she even knows how."

The unspoken words echo around Jane's head. _I'm not sure she had anyone to teach her_. She brushes the thought aside and goes back to pulling on woolies. "That's frickin' weird, I'm not sure I've ever met someone who's worked with a team without having stepped on the ice."

"It's not as though she ended up with us under normal circumstances, so it's not all _that_ surprising," Matty comments, pulling on a pair of gloves and tapping Jane on top of the head. "Hurry up and get out there, you two." She steps onto the ice and immediately calls for a pass.

Jane watches Matty cradle the puck when the pass is rocketed her way, her brow furrowed. "What'd she mean, not under 'normal circumstances'?"

Riley takes a swig from the nearest waterbottle before answering, her face turning sombre. "Our last captain ended up in the ER last year after getting in an accident driving to practice with our old doc. The doc was in bad shape, and when Isles was working on her Cap somehow talked her into replacing her temporarily, even though she'd never seen a game of hockey in her life. And for some unfathomable reason Isles has stuck around." She jumps up off the bench and grabs her stick. "C'mon, Rizzo, let's have a go!"

**RI**

"Yo, Amanto and Carlyle, your turn to do the shovel."

Jane sighs in relief and skates over to her bag, tugging at her hockey gloves. Thanks to the mix of sweat, snow, and cold, they've frozen in the shape of her hands. She tries to loosen up the leather but gives up and tosses them on top of her duffel before grabbing a pair of mitts and pulling them on. She snugs her toque lower on her head and pushes off, gliding around the huddle of players rooting through their bags. She finds a seat on the bench beside Isles, pinning her hands between her thighs to try and get them to warm up.

"How come you're not out on the ice?"

"I'm just here in case one of you gets injured."

Jane nudges her shoulder. "Aww, man, that's no fun, come out and skate. I'm sure Matty's got an extra pair in her garage."

"Rizzoli, I don't want to skate."

Jane narrows her eyes, a grin sneaking onto her face. "'Don't want to' or 'can't'?"

"_Rizzoli_."

"Isles, do you not know how to skate?" Isles ducks her head slightly, murmurs something under her breath. "Sorry, I didn't catch that."

She glares over at Jane. "No, I've never learned how to skate."

"Oh, man, you work with a hockey team and you can't skate?"

"Mocking me for not learning such a specific skill isn't going to make me want to try it, Rizzoli."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I wasn't mocking, I just think you should remedy that." She stands, turns, and holds out a hand out to Isles. "Come on, this is the perfect time to learn!"

"I'm not sure that 'on an outdoor rink in the middle of a snowstorm' qualifies as the ideal time at which to learn to ice skate."

"Humour me."

Isles shakes her head and crosses her arms, trying to hold a frown on her face, though it's slipping just the tiniest bit. "It's not going to happen, Rizzoli."

"Well, y'know, I _am_ a police officer, and I'm pretty sure it's against the law to have someone on a hockey team's staff who can't skate. Wouldn't want to have to arrest you, Isles."

"You're not going to give up, are you?"

"Nope." She proffers a hand again. "C'mon, Isles, lace up or shut up."

"I'm sorry...?"

"You can't very well tell us whether we're ready to get back into the game if you haven't experienced the demands it puts on the body, can you? So lace up some skates or shush with the clearance issues."

Isles sighs and grabs Jane's hand, letting her pull her to her feet. "Okay, if you insist."

**RI**

Jane barely manages to hold back a laugh when Isles almost falls the second she takes her first step on the ice. "That's about the opposite of what you want to be doing."

"You don't think I know that, Rizzoli?" Isles barks, taking awkward strides while holding on tight to Jane's forearm. "If you're just going to make fun of me then I'm not going to do this."

"Sorry, sorry." She steps onto the ice and Isles grabs her other arm to keep from going down again. "Have you ever roller bladed?" Isles shakes her head, mute. "Uh, try turning your foot at a bit of an angle and pushing...?" She demonstrates and Isles nods sharply.

"So, turn the foot... Is there a certain angle it should be at?"

"Just whatever feels natural, doc," Jane replies, rolling her eyes. "It's not exactly rocket science."

Isles peers down as she points her right foot out, and then pushes hard against the ice, gliding forward slightly. "Like that?" Her voice is almost childish when she peers hopefully up at Jane.

Jane nods, smiling warmly, Isles' hand on her arm sending a flutter through the pit of her stomach. "Yeah, doc, just like that." They share a shy grin.

Amanto's shout shatters the moment. "Isles, your pager's going off!"

"I wasn't on call today," slips out, slow, uncertain, in the second before she pulls the look Jane recognizes as Isles-the-trauma-surgeon back into play. "Take me back to the bench please, Rizzoli."

Jane pushes Isles across the ice, both hands on her hips to ensure she stays upright, and steadies her when she goes to sit down. She tears her skates off, flings them down beside the bench and laces her boots quickly before grabbing the pager out of Amanto's hand and reading the code.

"_Fuck_."

Her sprinting figure disappearing into the snow is the last Jane sees of her in the weeks before everything goes to hell.


	8. Chapter 7

**TW: Drug abuse**

**Thank you guys for all the feedback, it's super appreciated!**

**RI **

She places the headphones softly over her ears and tugs her hood up over her head. Her toes curl in her running shoes as she braces her knees against the back of the bus seat in front of her, and her sweatpants ride up her thighs with the change in angle, prompting the pills in her pocket to rattle around in the bottle.

The seat beside her is empty, as is tradition. Superstition dictates the seating arrangements for the entire bus, though on this particular ride from carpool parking to airport there's one discrepancy. Isles' usual seat at the front of the bus had been occupied instead by a greying man when they'd boarded, a family doctor Korsak had announced would be working with them for a couple of weeks while Isles worked shifts that conflicted with her Blades duties.

**RI**

Her defenceman rings it around the boards and deep into the offensive zone as she chases, dragging her toe at the blue line to keep herself onside before rounding the opposition defender with a burst of speed. She picks up the puck just below the goal line, her head on a swivel, and glides towards the net, searching for a passing lane. A white jersey bears down on her, and she sends a crisp pass to Cooper in the slot as she stops on a dime and cuts hard towards the halfboards to avoid the check.

With her attention split between the defenceman and Riley, she doesn't notice the winger swinging down from the point to support a breakout as the opposition centre strips Riley of the puck. If she had, she would've taken the soft hit at the goal line over the collision course she sets herself on.

The contact comes as a surprise to both players as they're caught watching the Furies centre stickhandle out of the zone, but the opposition winger reacts first. She holds strong and skates through the contact, and she _has_ to have put a hip into the check, because the next thing Jane knows she's in the air.

She's fairly certain her life flashes before her eyes as her stick falls from her hands, taking one of her gloves with it. (Okay, maybe just the previous ten seconds, but either way.) She pulls her arm up as she goes headfirst towards the ice, and _almost_ manages to cushion herself from the impact, but in the end it's the bars of her cage that hit the ground first. The rest of her crumples, arms pinned awkwardly beneath her torso, and a shrill whistle echoes through the otherwise eerily silent rink while she remains face down.

Jane cracks her right eye open first, and then her left, a shock jolting through her at the blur of red splashed across the ice in front of her face. She breathes a stuttering sigh of relief as her vision clears and the red slash, far too vibrant, coalesces into the arc of the faceoff circle. Not blood, then. Okay. Breathe. Get up.

She pulls her hand free of the glove pinned beneath her chest and presses both palms flat against the ice under her shoulders, pushing up slow and in control. She feels the presence beside her before she sees Cooper's helmet in her peripheral, and she shakes her head in answer to the unspoken question. Riley's hockey socks crackle as they rip free of the ice when she rises from her knees and glides back to give Jane space.

She pushes up, head pounding, and slides one leg up underneath herself, planting the blade on the ice and maneuvering herself into a kneeling position. Jane inhales slowly through her nose, her head hanging, and rubs her numbed hands on the thigh pad of her pants, trying to bring some feeling back to them.

The grate of blades slicing through ice catches her attention, and she looks up to see Amanto chaperoning the new doctor towards her, his hand clutching the defenseman's arm tightly to keep himself upright. (She thinks Korsak introduced him, but she can't for the life of her remember his name).

"Hey, Fifteen, how ya doing?" Not-Isles is entirely too loud, his voice ringing in her ears and slamming into her head full force.

"Rizzoli," Amanto corrects under her breath, steadying the doctor when his feet start to slip out from under him. She rolls her eyes at Jane, and she manages to eke out a quick smile in return.

"Rizzoli, then, how're ya feeling?"

"M'okay." She straightens her torso and shifts her weight toward her front leg just long enough to get her other skate settled underneath her. "Just having a yardsale." She gestures around herself with a grin that momentarily turns to a grimace at the pain shooting through her temples. She forces the grin back onto her face just as quickly as it vanishes. "Everything must go."

"Yard_sold_," Riley crows, sweeping up one of the gloves with the blade of her stick and shooting it towards Jane. Jane winces as the pressure threatening to bust her eardrums when she bends to collect the gloves that are now paired, but fights through the pain as she rights herself. Riley stoops down and grabs Jane's stick before gliding towards her and slinging her arm around her waist.

Jane pushes away the aid with a slight shake of her head, _pain_, and makes eye contact with Not-Isles. "I'm fine, just didn't expect to take a hit like that. Right as rain." She sets her shoulders, prepared for backlash, but Not-Isles looks her up and down as she skates a couple of strides and then nods his head.

"Okay, I'll let Coach Korsak know."

Confusion sets in as she heads back to the bench. That's not even close to the call Isles probably would have made, and maybe that's enough to make Jane a little uneasy, but she's not about to complain. Not when she's got two and a half more periods to play.

**RI**

One-two-three-four-five pills tumble into her palm, and she downs them dry and snaps the pill bottle shut before anyone looks her way. She stuffs the dwindling supply in the end pocket of her gear bag, then grabs a Gatorade bottle and takes a swig to wash the tablets home.

Cooper leans over and nudges Jane's shoulder with her own before jutting her chin towards the defender seated across from them. "Make sure you thank Carlyle for roughing up Johnson for you, yeah?" She'd earned herself a minor for grabbing the Furies winger by the front of her jersey and slamming her up against the boards after Jane had gone down.

"I did when she got out of the box." She leans forward to grab her helmet from where it rests between her skates, winces at the pressure that causes in her temples for a second and then shakes it off. She can't miss the concerned look Cooper sends her way when she sits upright.

"You sure you're okay to play the rest of the game?"

"Never felt better."

**RI**

It's not that she can't see the ice well. She's been tracking play like normal, knowing where the puck is going and where she should be to receive it. It's just that she can't seem to find enough pace to get there.

The play slows to a crawl in front of her, as if everyone's moving at half-speed, and she scans the offensive zone before tipping the puck past one of their defencemen and into the corner. The analysis is fine, it's the follow-through that's her issue. When the puck slides along the ice and she follows, stepping past the opposing player and driving towards the boards, it feels like she's skating in molasses.

The defenceman is able to reach the puck first, to avoid her stick check and fire it around behind the net to her partner, and from there the puck is cleared. Jane tries to pick up speed, to clear the zone and get back to support her goalie, and the speed comes again, if only for a couple strides. That's still enough that she breathes freely.

**RI**

The breakout is spot on, sending the forward line into a three-on-two. Jane holds steady with Erin as Cooper drops back, and her opposite winger carries the puck into the offensive zone.

The puck lands on her stick thanks to a crisp sauce from Erin, and she arcs wide at the top of the faceoff circle, drawing the defender with her. She can't help her grin when she cuts back, deking the player out hard enough she loses her footing. She draws her stick back and picks her corner, lets loose a snap shot before curling off towards the corner.

She doesn't see the puck enter the net.

When the Furies 'tender flashes her glove hand Jane's head drops. She leans forward, resting her stick on her pants, and sighs, missing the moment the puck meets twine. The cheers billow up and she looks up just in time to be mobbed by her teammates.

Her grin is so wide her cheeks ache, and the adrenaline that floods through her is almost enough to block out the dull headache the pills haven't been able to smother. Cooper fishes the rubber disc from the net and slips it into Jane's palm before smacking her on the pants.

"Atta girl, rook!"

Jane trades hugs and high fives with the rest of her linemates, then circles back to the bench for a round of fist bumps. She tosses the puck to Susie to hang onto and smiles broadly when Korsak motions to them to stay on for the faceoff. She can't help but think that everything's looking up.

**RI**

That feeling of elation stays with her for hours, through the final buzzer and the bus ride back to the hotel, through dinner and recovery. It shines bright in her mind until ringtones sound out in concert twenty minutes before lights out, when the speed with which it's snuffed out amazes Jane.

The phone calls come within seconds of each other, the sharp and professional "Cooper" followed closely by Jane's slurred "R'zoli". Jane can barely keep up with the chatter coming over the line, gleaning just enough information to know that it's all hands on deck back in Boston, no matter what they've got scheduled. Even if it's a game against a team they're head-to-head with in the playoff race. It's at times like these when, no matter how much she enjoys being a cop, she hates that the Blades aren't her day job.

"I'll tell Coach, you pack our bags?"

Jane rolls out of bed with a curt nod and crosses to the dresser. "You'll get us flights, too?"

A rushed "You know it," and Cooper's out the door.

**RI**

"Female police officer in her early twenties, deep abdominal laceration and puncture wounds through both hands." Murmurs of 'The Surgeon' flood around Maura, but she's a rock, a tower, allowing the waves to wash over her and pass on without carrying her away. This is her case, this is her patient, this is hers to concentrate on, regardless of whether or not she's the victim of a serial killer who's rapidly becoming the biggest news in Boston.

Regardless of the fact that she's lost the pair of his victims that have come through her ER since that day on the outdoor rink.

"How long out?" She tosses the question over her shoulder as she prepares herself. Mask on. Scrub hands. Trauma gown on. Gloves. The sequence is ingrained, methodical. It settles her.

"Bus'll be here in under two."

A part of her wants to remark that this is too close to the hospital, too far out of his hunting grounds, but she shoves that thought away. Two minutes. Double check. Mask, hands, gown, gloves pulled tight. She heads towards the ambulance bay, taking stock of the team of nurses she's got behind her, the orthopedic surgeon who joins her side.

The ambulance slams to a halt in front of her, and she's in the zone. She grabs the chart from the paramedic's hand as they pull the stretcher from the bus, notes heart rate and blood pressure and respiration rate, the numbers forming a scaffold on which she'll build a treatment plan. She hands the chart off to one of her nurses and takes hold of the stretcher, listening to the paras rattle off the facts of the situation into her ear as she pulls the stretcher towards the hospital and examines the abdominal wound. They've learned to work with her, to disregard niceties and jokes and instead rail off only the need-to-knows, which is why she's surprised when, between the care given at the field and in the ambulance, they toss comments about the scene they'd arrived at.

"-bleeding all over, hands _gushing_, but she's still managed to pull herself free and somehow she's holding a gun to his head-"

"-don't think she should even be able to _make_ a fist, let alone _carry_ a Glock-"

"-tells us she's fine, we should go check on her partner-"

"-fucking _badass_-"

She brushes the comments aside to make way for more relevant information, and moves her attention to the woman's hands. They turn the corner almost too quickly when they enter the trauma room and the officer's head rolls to face her. Maura catches her first glimpse of her patient's face and her breath catches in her throat.

She allows herself the second of shock before she turns back to the task at hand.

The eyes that have glared at her far too often through the steel cage of a hockey helmet stare blankly past her, unfocused beneath heavy eyelids. The paramedic beside her taps her elbow. "We've got a name now, Jane-"

"Rizzoli," she interrupts. "Her name's Jane Rizzoli."


End file.
